


and i'm your lionheart

by hell_swan



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/F, and Boyle tagging along, fake marriage trope, seriously they don't even talk to each other in the first 4000 words, slow-burn, with Jake offering his unique brand of help
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 20:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10557230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hell_swan/pseuds/hell_swan
Summary: Many, many things can go wrong. Many, many things do go wrong. And Rosa blames most of it on Jake.It is not because Rosa is hung up on Amy Santiago.-Or, "We're going undercover as a married couple to score a drug bust and I'm going to ignore how it makes me feel when you smile and kiss my cheek in front of the neighbors."





	

**Author's Note:**

> a) this takes place after The Road Trip and ignores canon thereafter,
> 
> b) this happened because I got angry at someone calling a 1400ish word fic "slow-burn,"
> 
> and c) I know very little about actual police procedure, so you should just go with it and enjoy.

Rosa registers three things while fire engines and police cruisers scream their way into suburban hell, the first of which is that Amy's been kissing her for what feels like hours without pulling away to breathe. It's like making out with a robot or something, one who has impossibly soft hair and supple lips that part and release a shaky moan and _God_ they need to do this more often. They need to shack up in Rosa's apartment and do this for a week, to hell with their jobs.

The second of which is that she's going to buy Jake coffee for a month as thanks, and as an apology for punching him so hard that he nearly cried as his left arm went numb. But If he makes any more U-Haul jokes, she's going to rip that arm off and beat him to death with it.

The third and final thing is that their charming, two story house with a white picket fence and window boxes filled with gardenias is on fire, and they're kissing on the front lawn, covered in scorch marks and the remains of a truly mediocre Chicken Kiev.

Wait. Rewind.

-

If Rosa thinks about it, really, truly thinks and digs down deep into the swampy bullshit land of emotions, which she's gotten into the habit of doing lately, it started at the precinct. The latest mess, anyway. She went to a Catholic school and a ballet academy, the issue of her bisexuality was settled when she realized that Renee Martin was just as gorgeous as her brother Alex (and yeah, sure, there was a little bit of a gay panic, but the nuns are to blame for that. Adult Rosa Diaz is unashamedly proud of her queerness, even if she keeps it just as private as the rest of her life outside of the nine-nine.)

But, whatever.

Once Rosa gets over her cold (and once she stops smiling at the tea and cough medicine Gina got for her), she's back at the precinct and notices something weird. She'd tried to ignore it for a week – heading up the task force holds her attention more often than not – but whatever's bothering Jake and Santiago keeps making them act like overcompensating morons. Rosa counted four stupid dick jokes from Jake in five minutes (and threatened to staple _his_ to his desk if he didn't cut the shit) and Santiago was organizing and reorganizing her desk with the kind of focus people normally saved for important things, like trying to defuse a bomb. It isn't until Gina perches on top of her desk that she learns _why_.

"You have ten seconds to move." Rosa says, flicking her eyes up from a requisition form. Paperwork's reached new levels of boring, necessary garbage thanks to the task force – not only in the form of reports on collaring low-level dealers, but the support needed to squeeze and cajole them for information on their suppliers. Gina plucks her pen from her hand, and gets her wrist caught in a vicegrip. Rosa says "You now have ten seconds to explain."

Gina rolls her eyes and drops the pen (black ink, white body, the cap chewed on because Rosa's been spending too many hours in the same bullpen as Santiago and picked up some of her nervous habits), shaking Rosa off. It's like watching one of her instructors back at the academy plant a charging recruit into the torn up mats: easy and impressive and, because it's Gina and she had her fear surgically replaced with airbrushed wolf heads, a little intimidating. The flip of her hair and sing songing "I've got gossip," a lot less so.

But Rosa has forms to fill out and uniforms to draft for surveillance and canvassing and a headache building between her eyes, so she says "don't care, go away."

"Oh Rosa, my sweet, grumpy flower." Gina says, repeating her name several times more and shaking her head like a disappointed parent. Rosa snorts and looks past her, to where Jake is flicking paper footballs through the upright posts of Santiago's fingers. She's laughing, the kind that only happens when she's forgotten to be uptight and is having fun goofing off. That forces Rosa to tune back in to Gina, because when the hell did she get familiar enough with Santiago's laughs to tell them apart. "- Rosa, Rosa, _Rosa_. The only people who don't care about gossip are the ones with empty, meaningless lives consumed by work."

"Cute." Rosa says, leaning back in her chair and folding her arms over her chest. Jake cheers in the background and the frown on her face turns into a glower. Gina is staring at a compact, primping her hair, and Rosa kicks the desk, making her fumble the mirror. "Talk and then go. I need to get these forms signed off by the captain, today."

"Well," Gina says, stretching the word out because she obviously doesn't care about bullshit paperwork and a dozen different higher ups who want to be "kept in the loop" and the crushing stress of leading a group of police officers who've turned up nothing but small time assholes who push narcotics on teenagers, "a little bird told me that Amy and her pilsner prince are kaput." 

Here Gina mimes an explosion with both hands a few inches away from Rosa's face.

Rosa slaps Gina's wriggling fingers, says "do that again and I'll cuff you to the evidence lockup's radiator. And who the hell is-"

"The little bird? I can't reveal my sources, girlfriend. Scout's honor. But if you must know, it was Charles, and he made me give him a nickname. I talked him down from "anonymous staffer inside the administration."" Gina says, a smile flickering at the corners of her mouth. It's one of the things that pushes Rosa's feelings regarding Gina from "I tolerate you for the sake of work" to "I'd let you buy me a beer." She's not half as lazy as she likes people to believe, which Rosa gets. Contrary to what the nine-nine and several surrounding precincts think, she's got a heart. It's just wrapped up in leather and grit and snarling bravado to keep the dickheads away.

Still, Rosa's annoyed and edging closer to exhausted with each passing second of this conversation, and she says "no, who's the prince? Santiago's boyfriend, Tom or Trevor or whatever?"

"First of all, Amy would never have a boyfriend with a name as exciting as Trevor. Second of all, it's Teddy, which made me think she was dating a cartoon. And third of all," Gina says, clapping and bouncing in place, "they broke up because she finally admitted she used to like Jake. And she called his life's passion boring, but who cares! With him gone that means you can finally get a piece of that under the pantsuit action."

"Shut up. We're done here." Rosa says, standing up so fast that her chair shoots back and smacks against Scully's legs. He goes down in a shower of thumbtacks and Rosa stalks out of the bullpen, Gina's cackling following her like a personal rain cloud.

-

It's not that Gina's wrong; it's that Rosa refuses to get her hopes up. Santiago is as straight as the creases on her slacks, and probably already well on her way to being charmed back into liking the one man clown show Jake Peralta calls his personality. Rosa went through the special hell of straight girls when she was a teenager - pining over best friends and teammates and getting crushed when they inevitably dated boys who smelled like sweat and Axe and couldn't manage two sentences without looking at their tits. 

So no, Rosa will not be getting "a piece of that under the pantsuit action." Even approaching Santiago with the idea would be messy and weird. Jake's her friend, ignoring the fact that he's a child trapped in a grown man's body, and she's not going to stab him in the back by asking the woman he's got a very obvious, very pathetic thing for out on a date. Life would get complicated and feelings would be involved, and that's not what Rosa needs right now.

Right now, Rosa needs a beer and a burger in a loud place far away from the squad, but she'll settle for coffee and a bagel in the break room after she's done a lap around the station. Spending twenty minutes thinking about ways to trap Gina in a filing cabinet will be _awesome_ , even if she can't actually do it without pissing off Holt and the sarge.

-

Two days later, the task force catches a break. A librarian – Andrew Paulson, forty-two and divorced with child support payments to worry about – was arrested with a trunk full of hollowed out books, each one crammed full of Giggle Pig (which is _still_ the dumbest name for a drug Rosa's ever heard, and she's developing a facial tic from having to write it down in her reports) and he flipped on his suppliers. Apparently they're married chemistry teachers living just outside of the city, using their off hours to cook drugs and funnel the profits into offshore retirement accounts. Breaking Bad, but lame and ruining Rosa's weekends.

The confession took a half hour to wring out of him, though checking the details and doing a cursory inspection of the neighborhood the teachers lived in ate up another day. Now Rosa's sitting in Holt's office, watching the captain read over the signed copy. There's a buzz of excitement low in her gut, making her mind race through possibilities. If Paulson is telling the truth, this could be the big score the task force needs. It'd be nice to go home _on time_ for a change and not have to worry about having her career torpedoed.

"I don't believe this man is telling the truth. It sounds like a poorly directed cable program." Holt says, pulling off his glasses. There's a tightness around his eyes that tells Rosa he's not happy, which is good, because anger is spiking through her like a bolt of lightning. Holt shakes his head, says "you need something better, or Wuntch is going to use our guts to decorate her cave, like a monster from a children's fable that was no doubt her role model."

"Sir, this is the only credible lead we've gotten in _weeks_ , we have to check it out."

"What about Tito Ruiz? His name's been mentioned in your reports before." Holt says, pausing for a moment and folding his glasses up. "Something about biting his subordinates's noses off."

"Dead end. Anyone connected to Ruiz or his organization is too scared to make a deal." Rosa says, hands clenching into fists. She'd spent hours grilling suspects and the story was the same: he'd kill them, he'd kill their families, he'd find the cops who made them snitch and hang them from the Brooklyn Bridge. "Bunch of babies."

"Then how do you propose to catch the - " Holt looks back to the confession and tilts his head slightly, like he's trying to convince himself the words on the page will read differently from another angle " - the DeSouzas."

"Standard surveillance." Rosa says, leaning back in her chair. The tension is still trapped in her body, but she knows how to direct it outward, into something useful, like breaking office equipment or winning an argument. "Stake out their house, see who comes and goes, bust their asses once we figure out how big their operation is. Three or four weeks, tops."

"And where will you base this surveillance?"

"There's a place on their street that's been on the market for over year. I've got Jake talking to the realtor in charge of the sale." Rosa says, and at that moment something thunks against the window behind her, a muffled voice shouting "sorry sir!" She sighs and says "Peralta?"

"Peralta." Holt says, nodding, a look of contemplation on his face. "How will you prevent the DeSouzas from suspecting they're being watched by a team of NYPD officers?"

"It won't be a team. I'll go in with Santiago, posing as a recently married couple looking to get away from the crowded city." Rosa says, ignoring the upward tick of one of the captain's eyebrows. His jaw might as well be on the floor, and it annoys her. Sure, asking Santiago had been kinda weird – she walked into a wall after agreeing to be "the best stakeout wife you've ever had" – but it's fine. This plan was already cleared and it will be fine.

"Yourself and Detective Santiago, pretending to be married? Do you think that that's. Wise?" Holt says, his words even flatter than usual. Rosa grits her teeth and gives him her best "I'm going to ignore what you said in favor of not assaulting my superior officer" stare. He coughs and says "yes, well, this _is_ your task force, Detective Diaz. I see no reason to attempt to micromanage your decision making process."

"Thank you, sir." Rosa says, pulling herself back from the ledge of impulsive violence. Her plan is going to go off without a hitch. She's not hung up on Santiago, and what's more, she's the only cop available who Rosa trusts implicitly. They have each other's backs. Nothing can go wrong.

-

Many, many things can go wrong. Many, many things _do_ go wrong. And Rosa blames most of it on Jake.

It _is not_ because Rosa is hung up on Amy Santiago.

-

After Holt dismisses her and after she briefs two more captains – both in charge of the manpower she'll need come time to arrest the DeSouzas – Rosa clocks out and heads to Shaw's for a well deserved drink, or three. It'll take time to get everything in place, to secure the house and move them in, but she can't shake the feeling of it being the night before a war. The tension she'd felt earlier in the captain's office is back, almost electric underneath her skin, and she knows by now how to get rid of it. Booze is step one.

Step two (find and bone an attractive woman who looks nothing like Santiago) is in flames, because Jake is sitting with Rosa in a booth seat, Gina her other side so she cant escape. He's got a gleam in his eye that usually means something is about to explode or leak or burst and destroy the simple calm Rosa tries to maintain in her life.

"So, I heard you and Amy are getting hitched, and I got you a toaster! Mazel Tov, or, whatever lesbians say when they do it, I'm way out of my depth here." Jake says before he slides a magazine cutout across the table, a half empty beer in his other hand. "Well, I got you a picture of a toaster, I still suffer from crushing debt and can barely keep myself in sour gummy worms."

"The candy of losers and middle school nerds." Gina says, eyes glued to her phone. "I myself only partake of Skittles mixed with peanut M&Ms."

"Because you're the literal devil." Jake says before turning his attention back to Rosa. It feels a lot like watching the shadow of a piano overtake the sidewalk as it drops from fifty stories up. "Please tell me how you got Holt to agree to this plan. He rejected all three of my fake married stakeout requests, and the last one was a couple's retreat that turned out to be a mafia front!"

"Yeah, but the first two were for five star restaurants, on Fridays. The captain knows when you're trying to make the department pay for a woman to slap you in a crowded room, boo." Gina says, smirking as she slips her phone into her zebra striped purse. Rosa first saw it a month ago and it's still making her shudder in revulsion. But not as much as the syrupy smile Gina gives her before she says "though it _is_ a rare good question from Jake -"

"Ignoring that in favor of grilling Diaz, but know that my feelings are hurt."

"- how'd you get Holt to agree without telling him about your big gay crush on-"

Gina is interrupted by Rosa's hand over her mouth. Jake is quietly murmuring "oh damn" to himself, which stops when Rosa glares at him. She wonders if this is punishment for dumping her coffee out in Hitchcock's trashcan after Boyle poured homemade creamer into her mug (refusing to tell Rosa what animal it came from, only that the scent was "sumptuous and pungent." She's not sure whether he was talking about the creamer or its source.)

"If you ever finish that sentence I will tear your tongue out and feed it to Boyle's dogs." Rosa says, chancing a look into the crowd. So far it's the usual mix of locals and off-duty cops, with Terry sharing new pictures of the twins with a nervous looking Santiago on the opposite side of the room. Her hair's down from the day's ponytail, but she looks like it's still yanking on her head. There's a lot of grimacing poorly hidden by fake laughter and Rosa's kicked in the chest by the sudden impulse to go over there and _help_ Santiago.

Which is ridiculous. The sarge is a teddy bear and Santigo is a grown woman, a detective in the NYPD. She's got bravery to spare and God damn it where are these thoughts coming from?

"Oh my God, you're in love with Amy!" Jake says, sounding like he can't decide if he's delighted or dumbstruck. Rosa slugs him in the shoulder, hand still on Gina's mouth (Gina has her phone out and doesn't seem to care.) He yelps and starts rubbing his bicep and she rolls her eyes. It wasn't even that good of a punch – one of her legs is stretched out underneath the table as opposed to planted on the floor for strength. Weenie.

"It's like being hit by a brick with fingers. Fingers that are also made out of brick, with cement knuckles." Jake says, blinking back what look like actual tears.

"Dude, are you crying?" Rosa says, crossing her arms over her chest (Gina celebrates her newfound freedom by pointing at Jake and laughing.) "I've hit you way harder than that before and you didn't cry."

"Jake's crying?" Boyle says, popping up like a tiny, pathetic jack-in-the-box. Gina startles and throws the dregs of her cocktail at him, making him whine while she says "sorry, impulse reaction to strange men approaching me in bars," which devolves into an argument about how their disgusting sex romp makes Boyle "so much more than a stranger" and Rosa stops listening to the conversation immediately after that. Her buzz is wearing off and Jake got up to go to the bathroom, loudly saying so, which is code for "find me so we can talk about feelings that I know you have and appreciate being able to share."

Rosa hates that she understands the code.

She finds Jake watching a game of pool, eyes darting to follow the balls as the race across the felt top. He's got a fresh beer in hand and a glass of whiskey that he passes to Rosa after she settles against the wall next to him. Jake smiles, says "I figured you'd want something to help you forget that you're about to experience an emotion that isn't rage."

"I don't love Santiago. Most of the time she drives me crazy, just like the rest of you." Rosa says, sipping on her drink. It's like smoke in her mouth, all crackling bonfire and thick peat on her tongue before it slides down her throat with steady burn.

"Okay, a) hurtful and b) just jumping right into this, I can handle that." Jake says, and Rosa chooses to overlook the way his voice pitches up. He squares his shoulders, mutters what sounds suspiciously like "Eye Of The Tiger, Peralta," and says "why not?"

"What." Rosa doesn't break her glass, but it's a near thing.

"Why not?" Jake says, and Rosa is trapped between aggravation and shock, so he keeps talking, words running into each other as he shrinks in place, "Amy's a great detective and a beautiful woman and I've seen you looking at her when she's distracted alphabetizing her open case files and wow I did not realize a human being could frown that hard."

"Why are you even asking? I didn't come out tonight to talk about my feelings. I wanted to get drunk, in silence." Rosa says, a tendril of fear creeping up through her annoyance with Jake. If he noticed something – not that there was anything to notice in the first place – then the rest of the squad probably had too. God help her if Boyle added his demented advice to the pile. Rosa squares her shoulders and looks Jake dead in the eye, says "let's go back to that and you never mention me loving anyone, let alone Santiago, ever again."

"Why do you keep calling her that?" Jake says, setting his beer down and standing up straight. It would almost be impressive if Rosa hadn't seen him try to eat eight loaded hotdogs in the break room on a bet with Boyle. Memories of him puking once he found out they were made from intestines ruins the show of spine.

"Her name?"

"No, see, the name her friends use is Amy, or Ames, or Queen of the Three Ring Binder if it's her birthday." Jake says, wagging his finger in Rosa's face. She knows three ways to bend it and make Jake wish he was dead, two of which would have him pissing his jeans. But instead, she sips her whiskey as he says "the only people who call her Santiago are Captain Holt and gym teachers."

"Gym teachers?" Rosa says, feeling a smirk tug at the corner of her mouth.

"Middle school was hell, I don't want to talk about it."

"What a coincidence, I don't want to talk about this." Rosa says, the limits of her patience straining as she hears Amy – Santiago, she hears Santiago laughing. She's in the booth with Gina and Boyle and she's laughing and Rosa is very sure she doesn't feel anything about it at all.

"You deserve to be happy. Both of you do." Jake says, and Rosa hears her neck crack as it whips her head around to look at him. He's got a somber look plastered on his face, and she wants to attribute it to whatever shitty beer he's drinking tonight. Wants to, but can't, because this is Jack Peralta, the man who cried for twenty minutes when he spotted double rainbows over the precinct on his walk over.

"I'm happy." Rosa says, feeling stupid even as she says the words. Her voice is flat, no longer lit up by the flame of anger Jake's needling sparked. She's back to the edge of exhaustion, juggling a dozen different problems in her head and praying she won't get blown up when she fucks up and drops them. Jake frowns at her and she says "Shut up, I am. And even if I wasn't, a girlfriend wouldn't fix it."

"Look, Rosa," Jake says, reaching out to put his hand on her shoulder. She glares and he pulls it back without skipping a beat, "there's a difference between being happy and being _happy_ , you know?"

"I don't." Rosa says, finishing her whiskey. The burn stopped being pleasant once Jake did his stupid "I'm going to help you whether you like it or not" face. His eyes get big and wet and it's like he's got something stuck in them but there's a smile underneath it all and Rosa wishes she weren't so Goddamn weak. Part of her does understand what Jake's going for, the idea that being content with your work and your hobbies is good, but sharing it with someone can be better.

"You do. I know you do, because you just grunted and frowned and that only happens when I'm right and you don't want to admit it." Jake says, grinning wider, and he adopts an air of false humility that makes Rosa want to punch him and go home. "It's okay, Rosa, you never stood a chance against Jake Peralta, Love Master."

"Never say that again." Rosa smacks his shoulder and shoves her empty glass into his hand. Both motions lack her usual energy and Jake notices, because he mimes zipping his lips shut without another word. It doesn't matter if he's right, just like it doesn't matter if Rosa has feelings for Santiago. There's a stakeout to prepare for and a career making bust at the end of it. Everything else is a distraction.

Except, as Rosa turns to go back to the booth, she sees that Santiago is pressed up against her leather jacket, using it to as a headrest. She'd taken it off earlier, worried about Gina spilling her shitty blue cocktail all over it. And now it's hung half off the top of the booth seat, piled around Santiago's neck, and Rosa is _fucked_ , because something warm fills her chest at the sight.


End file.
